Some of you may know that Google slipped up in Android 4.3 and allowed regular users access to what they called an “internal testing app” called “App Ops” that they eventually removed in Android 4.4.2. This app was tucked away in some hidden settings menu and allowed users to selectively remove permissions that an Android app asks for. I have been hearing from a few sources that tried tricks to get access to App Ops on the latest BlackBerry 10.3 leak and it works!

One of the biggest complaints I get from security minded BlackBerry 10 users is the inability to selectively deny permissions to Android apps like you can with native apps. Now with App Ops you can do this for all Android apps even the ones that come from BlackBerry World. If you don’t want an app to have access to your address book then you can deny it.

All you have to do is download one of the App Ops enabler apps that opens up this menu. Keep in mind this REQUIRES BlackBerry OS 10.3 so MAKE SURE you are using a leaked build and follow Omnitech’s instructions on this forum thread. Hopefully BlackBerry leaves this in the official OS 10.3 builds!

In 10.3, Android apps have the same permission switches in the settings app, only they’re greyed out. Hopefully, they will tie into App Ops before launch.

It’s only the first step though… On/Off is not good enough and can break things. BlackBerry needs to import the features found on phones like the Oppo One Plus, which allows to send mock data per example and it needs to happen on both the native and Android side if we want to prevent data leakage.

I don’t see why they would write the UI and isolate the permissions if they didn’t intend to use them. Worst comes to worse, the QNX side could brute-force block the data (or, even, insert false data) before it could even enter the Android runtime environment.